


Failure

by Astray



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Angst, Community: asscreedkinkmeme, Gen, The Author Regrets Everything, feels carnage, kinkmeme prompt, spoilers for the end of AC3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 05:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astray/pseuds/Astray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William discovers the body of Desmond at the end of AC3. William POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failure

He was floating – or falling. Whatever it was... His insides seemed to be weightless against his leaden bones. Ages bones. Bones of a father. He had known – he had seen Shaun and Rebecca freeze, stopping dead in their track. Dead. 

Disbelief – he had to be sleeping. It was a joke, it had to be! Let it not- _Who are you fooling?_ His breathing suddenly formed a staccato – not enough air to keep him going, but too much to properly let it go. He did not know how his feet carried him to Desmond. His son. His _SON_! Pain reared its ugly head, diving for his throat. He fell to the ground – could not move. He could not... his hands shook as he tried to reach for him. He tried, Gods, he tried. And all the while his mind was repeating a single word like a mantra – each 'no' carving a dent in the walls of his sanity. 

As soon as his fingers touched Desmond's cold, cold, face – it fell on him. He was on a railway and a train was rushing towards him – dread was replaced with a despair that clung to him like tar. Moving was impossible. The strings that once have held him together snapped and he crumpled on his son's prone form. 

He has once prided himself in being a master at controlling his emotions. This control shattered. All that was left – his purpose, his hopes, his wishes – all was destroyed by a single touch. He was not an assassin anymore. He was not a husband, a widower – or a father. Do they even have a word for a father losing his only child? His pain was a nameless one. It could not be named, it could not be fought. All that was left was an aged man clutching onto his son's body for dear life. Not his. _The dead would never walk again._

A wail tore itself from his throat, claws ripping and renting flesh and tendons – if only he could bleed. Let him not live – he has lost. Lost. And that tiny word was a black hole, a vacuum devouring his mind. Self-hatred dug its fangs in his skull. _It is your fault. You dragged him into it. You did this to him. There was no protection you could afford that could not be upturned. Hope you lived a happy lie – because it's no lie anymore. Open your eyes and see. No, he would not. OPEN YOUR EYES!_

He did – and all he saw was a nightmare. It should have been him – not Desmond. Never Desmond. But he had known, he had known that Desmond alone could have found what they had sought for decades. Guilt strangled him. It was nothing, nothing compared to what was gnawing through his ribcage, carving his heart out. He doubled over. 

And I've never told you how much I loved you. I resented you for leaving. I could not protect you. I failed you... My son. 

All that remained – there was no victory. No one to cheer. Just a broken, middle-aged man bent over the body of his dead son, finally seeing... There was no hope, after all. And no one saw the barely visible shades by Desmond's side. Three Masters. The last remnants of a past that will be mercilessly buried. Three guardians without a ward. And a father who was not a father anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I am just feeling like a horrible person for doing that. /cries


End file.
